As people move in and out of groups, and as people's contexts change, policies concerning how such people communicate can change. Associations between people are constantly changing. New associations come into being, old associations fall apart, and existing associations add members, lose members and have the status of the relationships between the members change. Furthermore, communication channels available to a member of a group, for the group as a whole and/or for a subset of the group may change.
Consider the problems associated with disseminating information to a dynamically changing group (e.g., a programming team tasked with developing a new release for a product while maintaining an existing product). The team may typically include an architect, designers, analysts, programmers, quality assurance personnel, technical support members, secretaries and managers. Throughout the lifetime of the project, the membership may change (e.g., a first programmer leaves the team, a new programmer joins the team), the relationships within the group may change (e.g., an analyst is promoted to a designer) and the responsibilities of members may change (e.g., a programmer may be transitioned from new development to maintenance programming). The desired flow of information within the group, from the group and to the group may change based on such changes to the group. Typically, the desired communication paths, the desired communication channels and/or the desired points of contact with the group may be maintained manually (e.g., a printout of a phone chain, a printout of an organizational chart) and may quickly become out of date. Thus, sub-optimal communications within and with the group may be expected.